I started school at the Institute of Integrated Nutrition (IIN) this month. I have wanted to enroll in this program for some time but have always been too busy or didn’t feel comfortable spending the money. I had a burst of motivation a couple weeks ago and enrolled. Really excited! It’s a 12 month online program with a health coach certification at the end. I didn’t sign up to be a health coach, I wanted to be more informative on the blog, and feel and be better.

I’ve started the fundamental modules before the courses begin in a couple weeks and what I’ve realized right away is this is not only going to be about food and exercise. Good health is more then that. IIN’s theory is nutrition is part of being healthy, but so are relationships, exercise, career, and spirituality. Joshua Rosenthal, founder of IIN, asked the question if someone who goes home and binges would still binge if they came home to a warm hug and someone saying “I love you”. Probably not. After some thought, this theory makes sense. And after some more thought, this is my life! I eat healthy, lots of paleo meals, stay away from processed foods, lots of vegetables and meat from the farmers market. I workout 4-5 times a week. But this is where my good health stops. I don’t feel healthy, I’m tired, stressed, and anxious most of the time.

After accepting not being healthy and feeling disappointed since I do try hard to be, I’ve been overwhelmed by all of the things that make me not healthy. My days are a scrambled mix of working part-time, this blog, designing lucky envelopes, driving my kids to activities, hosting play dates, seeing my friends, connecting with my husband. This might be similar to your life but for me, it’s too much.

I have to find a way to good health. I’m very much looking forward to this 12 month journey with IIN.

From my research on the Internet, my symptoms pointed to inflammation, autoimmune disease, and leaky gut so I started to heal myself with food and lifestyle changes. I started with the 21 Day Sugar Detox to remove gluten, dairy, most all fruits, and many other foods that trigger inflammation, and start resetting my body. This detox cleared up the eczema on my stomach and hands. I read The Paleo Cure and did the 30-Day Reset. I started to reintroduce foods slowly back into my diet and carefully watched how my body reacted. I found out dairy triggered my eczema, and gluten, tomatoes, and white beans upset my stomach. I knew to stay away from these foods.

I found a doctor on the Institute of Functional Medicine that was in line with my approach to recovery. I wanted someone to find the problem, not manage my symptoms. He used blood tests to find answers. I had a thyroid autoimmune disease, also known as hypothyroidism, also known as Hashimoto’s. Gluten intolerance triggered this and caused the inflammation in my skin (eczema) and brain (uncontrolled twitch).

Conventional medicine would treat the thyroid autoimmune disease symptoms with antibiotics. Because the antibiotics won’t solve the problem, there would be more antibiotics and higher dosages to treat the symptoms.

I chose to reduce, manage, and hopefully eliminate the inflammation. I changed my diet and stopped eating gluten, dairy, and the other food triggers. The other changes I needed to make were lifestyle changes. I’ve always had stressful jobs and not enough sleep. This had to stop. The food changes were the easier part. Managing stress and sleeping more then 7 hours were much harder.

It’s been 3 years since I started this journey of getting well. My B12 number is healthy, thyroid antibodies is going down, no uncontrolled twitch, and eczema is almost cleared up. It’s a journey that I’m still on and I know as long as I’m feeling well and my test results are heading in the right direction, I’m on the right path.

From my last post, Something Was Wrong, I was diagnosed with B12 deficiency, taking B12 supplements, had the names of a gastroenterologist and neurologist to go and see.

My primary care doctor wanted me to see a gastroenterologist (gastro) because B12 deficiency can sometimes be a sign of inflammation of the stomach lining known as Atrophic Gastritis. The gastro wasn’t completely sure why I was there to see him because I didn’t have any other symptoms for Atrophic Gastritis. He said my primary doctor probably wanted him to do an endoscopy. He explained during an endoscopy, I would be put to sleep with anesthesia and he would put a tube with a camera at the end down my throat to the top of the intestine and take a sample of stomach tissue lining to check for Atrophic Gastritis. This hospital procedure scared me.

I went to see my primary doctor to talk to her about my concerns about the endoscopy and the complications from anesthesia. Though I didn’t say this, it didn’t feel right when he said my primary doctor probably wanted him to do an endoscopy when he should have the reason to do the procedure. Her response was the anesthesia would be the best sleep I’ll ever have. Hearing this was surprising and disturbing, but she was my doctor and even though I was concerned, I trusted her.

I felt nervous and anxious the weeks before the endoscopy. The procedure went well and no Atrophic Gastritis.

I went to see the neurologist because of the 5 second facial twitch I could not control. She did a full neurological exam in the office and everything was normal. I went back for an EEG, a test that measures electrical activity in the brain to find abnormal brain waves. Bright lights are shined in your eyes and you have to take repeated deep breaths to try and see if there are signs of seizures in your brain. I had some abnormal brain waves but not definitely a seizure. The neurologist wanted to put me on seizure medicine to make sure the facial twitch didn’t come back. I asked her for how long since she couldn’t definitely say I had seizures and her response was if I didn’t have another episode for 2 years she would take me off. What…2 years!?

I looked up the side effects of seizure medicine and they ranged from stomach pain to a fatal drop in white blood cells. I was scared and could not bring myself to take the medicine without definitely having seizures.

Even though the B12 supplements were helping with the tiredness and foggy brain, I was so stressed, anxious, and slept terribly during these 6 months of seeing these doctors, getting tests and hospital procedure.

I couldn’t trust my primary doctor anymore. I saw specialists and they could not find what was causing my ailments. I had to take responsibility for my health and figure it out myself.

I’ve always tried to be healthy. I would stay away from cake and candy, drank skim milk and ate low fat packaged foods (this was before I knew fat was good for you). Being healthy was part of our childhood. My mom bought us vitamins, she made us drink Chinese teas after we ate fried foods to detox, and we drank green powders to boost our immune systems.

When I started working, I bought a gym membership. During this time, I started to put the most stress on my body. I worked at a start-up company with a lot of work and too few employees. I worked everyday, 10-14 hours. The couple of times a week I went to the gym and the healthy meals were no where near enough to help my body recover from the lack of sleep and constant stress.

I stopped working when my oldest daughter was 2. The long work hours, trying to spend time with my family, and not being present in anything got to be too much.

After I had my youngest daughter, I had the normal months of fatigue from around the clock feedings and also taking care of a toddler. After six months, the baby was sleeping almost through the night, I was getting into a routine taking care of both children, but I still felt tired all of the time, even after 8 hours of sleep. I was tired, my brain was always in a fog, I had eczema all over my hands and stomach, and I had a 5-second episode when my face twitched and I could not stop.

Something was wrong.

I went to see my primary care physician, she ran blood tests, and the results came back that I was very vitamin B12 deficient. B12 is an essential nutrient for your body because it helps make DNA and red blood cells. It also helps produce the myelin sheath, the insulation around the nerves that helps them carryout messages throughout the body. Because the body needs B12 in so many places, when you become deficient, the symptoms range from fatigue to weight loss to neurological problems.

My physician had me take a B12 supplement and wrote the names of a gastroenterologist and neurologist to go and see. This was the start of months of seeing different doctors, blood tests, hospital procedures, and a lot of Internet research.

In my next blog post, I’ll describe this experience and why I no longer believe in conventional medicine.

After I had my youngest daughter almost 5 years ago, I was in bad health. I was tired all of the time, even when I woke up in the morning, my brain was always in the fog, and I had eczema all over my hands and stomach. After a year of seeing doctors, tests, hospital procedures, crazy diagnosis, and inconclusive results, I took my health into my own hands and scoured the Internet to try and figure out what was wrong with me. I found ChrisKresser.com and I had symptoms of a leaky gut. I followed his protocol to heal it and feel so much better. Now that I have made the changes in my lifestyle to maintain good gut health, I want to go back and understand the science behind what is going on.

Dr. Sara Ballantyne from thepaleomom.com, has been my best resource for my research. She explains using drawings which is how I learn best. Below is my visual explanation of a leaky gut.

The gut is your digestive track, a tube that starts at your mouth and ends in your anus.

Digestion in the tube occurs when enzymes (pictured above with the letter “E” and teeth) and friendly bacteria break down food into a nutrients the body can use.

Proteins (P) are broken down into amino acids (AA)

Carbohydrates (C) are broken down into monosaccharides (M)

Fats (F) are broken down into fatty acids (FA)

Everything else is discarded as waste (W).

The tube is a single layer of specialized cells, called enterocytes. Enterocytes let nutrients (proteins, monosaccharides, fatty acids) out so the blood and lymphatic vessels can transport them throughout the body, while keeping the waste inside the tube. Right outside the enterocytes are the gut specific resistant immune cells that attack any waste or pathogens (disease-causing organisms) that accidentally gets through the enterocytes wall. A healthy gut has tight protein bonds holding the enterocytes wall together. A leaky gut has damaged or altered protein bonds resulting in holes in the enterocytes wall. Pathogens such as partially digested proteins, friendly bacteria that is suppose to stay inside the gut, toxic substances and waste leak through the wall. The body identifies these foreign substances and attacks with the gut resident immune cells and also sends backup from resident immune cells from other body parts like the liver.

I started having health problems after I had my second daughter. I felt sluggish, had a foggy-brain and always fatigued even after 8 hours of sleep. Doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong so I started to change my diet and lifestyle and started to heal myself with food. Food is the fuel for our bodies to have good health and stay well. With only so much room in your stomach, it’s important to me to eat and feed my family nutrient dense foods. Here are the simple reasons I choose grass-fed over grain-fed meat:

More Antioxidants, Vitamins, Minerals. Compounds like carotenoids are found as pigments in plants and in abundance in grass-fed meat because of the grass diet. Carotenoids act like antioxidants protecting against cellular damage, aging and diseases. Grass-fed meat also contains high levels of other antioxidants such as vitamin E, glutathione, and minerals like zinc and iron.

Essential Fatty Acids. These are fats that your body needs because without them you could cause serious damage to your body systems. Essential fatty acids are not usually made by the body so you have to eat them. Omega-3 and Omega-6 are the two most familiar essential fatty acids. Grass-fed and grain-fed beef have about the same amount of Omega-6. Grass-fed meat has over 3 times as much Omega-3s. Omega-3s are a vital role in the cells and systems in your body from your heart to your brain. They also decrease inflammation.

CLA. Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) is found naturally in the milk and meat of cows and sheep. CLA acts like a strong antioxidant or natural substance that stops or limits the damage caused by free radicals which contribute to aging and diseases. Research indicates CLA might protect against heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Beef is one of the best sources of CLA and grass-fed beef contains 2 to 3 times more CLA then grain-fed beef.

Grass-fed meat costs more then grain-fed meat. I manage these costs by buying cheaper cuts like ground meat.

It’s taken me 3 years to stop using soy sauce. It’s been used in my family for generations so I feel a little less Chinese saying this. Here is why I did it:

Highly processed. I read this article by Kaayla T. Daniel, author of The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Favorite Health Food, to understand how soy sauce is made and it is scary. Traditional soy sauce is made with a fermentation process that can take as long as 18 months in the traditional manner and unpasteurized. Unfortunately, this is not the soy sauce that you buy in the grocery story or get at Chinese takeout restaurants. These soy sauces use soybean meal (not whole soy beans) and high-tech processes with chemicals to reduce the production process to 8 to 12 hours. Sugars, caramel colorings, and other chemical flavorings are added before it is pasteurized and bottled. Gross! The processing of commercial soy sauce alone produces so many undesirables like ethyl carbonate, compound linked to cancer, and totally destroys the beneficial and essential amino acid, tryptophan.

Contains gluten. Knowing how commercial soy sauce is made, I cannot use it to cook food for my children. Traditional soy sauce would be an option but it contains gluten and I stopped cooking gluten a year ago because it triggers my eczema and my youngest daughter is gluten intolerant. Tamari is a gluten-free alternative that uses the traditional fermentation method. It is my secondary choice because it goes through pasteurization processing.

Soy is not healthy.Soy has one of the highest levels of phytoestrogens, plant based estrogen that mimic estrogen in the body. This is bad because the leading cause of breast cancer, endometriosis, uterine fibroids, infertility is estrogen dominance, or too much estrogen in our body. This is just made worse by eating a food high in estrogen. Soy will destroy your thyroid by blocking the essential amounts of iodine it needs. Soy farming started to build soil fertility and feed farm animals. It was not considered fit for human consumption until the Chineselearned how to ferment it, which made it digestible. Most consumed soy products do not use the traditional methods of fermentation. Knowing what I know now about soy, I want to cry when I remember giving my oldest daughter organic soy milk formula thinking it was healthy.

Because soy sauce was ingrained in my life, it took time to figure out how to cook Chinese meals without it. Now I use a combination of Coconut Aminos, salt, and Red Boat Fish Sauce in place of soy sauce. Here are the proportions:

In Part 1 of my 21 Day Sugar Detox story I wrote about my reason for doing the detox and what I learned. In Part 2, I explained the things you should know when deciding, preparing, doing the detox. In this blog post, Part 3, the last of my 21 Day Sugar Detox story I’m going to talk about my Grouchy Husband’s experience.

This detox was a great experience for me. I’m really pleased with the results. The eczema I had been battling on my hands for the last two years has finally cleared up. I am much more aware of the types of sugars I put into my body and the ones to stay away from. But the very very best part of the experience was doing it with my Grouchy Husband.

Healthy, vegetables, nutritious, were not part of my Grouchy Husband’s vocabulary. He works a lot and to keep himself going and awake, his diet consisted of coffee, soda, granola bars, with maybe a real meal a day. He and I are complete opposites…we define the opposites attract theory. We have busy lives and most days we see each other in passing. I asked him to do the detox with me because I want him to be healthy, but also because I wanted to do something together. He shockingly agreed!

What my Grouchy Husband Loved:

He lost 10 pounds. A secret about my Grouchy Husband is he is obsessed with his weight and his pants size. Whenever he comes with me to the girl’s doctor appointments, he absolutely must weigh himself. I had to buy a scale just so he could weigh himself after the detox. I’m not sure if all men are like this. Please let me know if you know one. This detox was a drastic change to his diet. It was hard work for him to be on the detox so it was a very nice surprise to have lost so much weight.

He could eat meat on the detox. I cooked meat every way I knew and tried new recipes. He was exited to be eating so much steak, bacon, and pork products.

Things to know about my Grouchy Husband’s experience:

Cutting out coffee, soda, and processed sugar was a major change in my Grouchy Husband’s diet and it took a week and a half for his body to adjust to no sugar and start to detoxify itself. He had a headache for the first five days on the detox. This got better and eventually went away. He was constantly blowing his nose and the discharge was smelly. I read this was caused by detoxing dairy from your system. All of these are expected symptoms on the detox.

He learned to eat vegetables. Before the detox the only vegetables my Grouchy Husband was eating was corn, peas, and tomato sauce. On the detox he couldn’t eat his normal empty calories so he was hungry and ate broccoli, brussel sprouts, and zucchini pasta.

He had second thoughts in the middle of the first week. He said he was only going to do a week, then it was only 11 days, then two weeks, and finally it was the last week and he just had to finish. 21 days doesn’t seem like a long time but when you are only on day 10 and hungry for a piece of fruit, it feels like forever away.

It’s been a couple of weeks since we finished the 21 Day Sugar Detox. The picture above is a week after the detox. We were at a wedding, we could drink alcohol again and we both felt great. My Grouchy Husband is now drinking large coffees with only one sugar. He doesn’t chew gum, drank one soda the other day, still eats nuts for snack and likes my pumpkin pancakes. I’m so proud he finished the detox and has made changes to his diet to better his health. I’m so proud we did it together.

To learn more about the 21 Day Sugar Detox or buy the book and online guides click here.

Proud Wife to a Grouchy Sugar-Detoxed Husband,
Chrissy xo

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, but all opinions are mine. I will only share with you products and services I have tried and would use myself or for my family. By clicking an affiliate link, you are helping to support this blog. Thank you.

In Part 1 of my 21 Day Sugar Detox story, I wrote about my reason for doing the detox and what I learned. In this blog post, Part 2, I’m going to share things to know about doing the detox.

I’m going to be honest, the 21 Day Sugar Detox was hard. By the end, my eczema was gone and I had lost a couple of pounds, but while on the detox, I was tired, I missed my favorite sugary snacks, and really needed to stay on top of preparing meals and snacks. All of the hard work was totally worth it. The eczema I have had for the last 2 years is finally gone, I am so aware about sugar and read labels on everything, and I am finding what in my diet is having a negative impact on my health. Here are some things to know about doing the detox:

Plan and prepare meals and snacks ahead of time. I am a full-time mom, part-time marketing consultant, with two little girls. Life is busy. Instead of cooking one meal my family would normally eat together, I was cooking one for my girls, one for my Grouchy Husband (he agreed to do the detox with me but doesn’t like a lot of vegetables) and one for myself. I was so tired in the beginning from all of the cooking and my body was adjusting to low/no sugar and carbs. By the last week I finally got ahead of meal making and my body adjusted. What worked best for me was to make a big pot of soup or stew ahead of time and eat it when I didn’t have time to make a meal. I made a beef stew that we ate for at least 10 meals.

One day I roasted a chicken in the morning and we ate it all day. My girls loved roasted chicken and eggs in the morning. Plan ahead especially if you are feeding a busy family.

You need a lot of rest and sleep. Your body is detoxing. It needs rest so it can focus on breaking the addiction to sugar and healing. I couldn’t reach for my favorite sugary pick-me-ups in the afternoon. This was hard at first and I definitely dozed off at some of my mid-afternoon meetings. I was forced to go to bed early and learned quickly I shouldn’t fight it.

Ignore outside opinions. Depending on your circle of friends and family and their health values and views, you could receive some level of criticism on your decision to do the detox. I heard things like “how can eating bacon and eggs be healthy?’ and “you might be losing weight, but your cholesterol is through the roof”. Don’t let this discourage you. You have decided to do the sugar detox because you want to make an improvement to yourself, improve your health, improve your diet, etc. Any step to improve yourself is an awesome thing. Eating bacon and saturated fats isn’t going to raise my cholesterol.

The 21 Day Sugar Detox book is coming out October 29, 2013 ($22.96). If you pre-order the book you get 7 quick start guides to get your started on the detox today ($21 value). Click Here to order.

Enjoying the results of my sugar detox,
Chrissy xo

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, but all opinions are mine. I will only share with you products and services I have tried and would use myself or for my family. By clicking an affiliate link, you are helping to support this blog. Thank you.

I just completed the 21 Day Sugar Detox program created by Diane Sanfilippo. Diane is a Holistic Nutritionist specializing in Paleo nutrition, blood sugar regulation, food allergies and digestive health. The effect of sugar and refined, nutrient-poor carbohydrates leaves us fat, sick, tired, and unhappy. Here is my sugar detox story.

I have been battling eczema since my Baby was born two years ago. I had it on my stomach but the worst was on my hands. It was so painful. My hands had so many open soars I couldn’t bathe my baby and toddler at night. I had it on my fingers and on my palms. When I gave up gluten a year ago, the eczema on my stomach cleared up. My hands were better but never cleared up completely. My hope was eliminating sugar from my diet would give me more insight into what was triggering the eczema.

About six months ago, I started having really bad acne on my face. I do not have perfect skin but acne was something I thought I had thankfully grown out of. It was all over my face, my forehead, along my hair line, my chin, my cheeks. My Princess asked me one day what all the bumps were on my forehead. It’s heart-breaking to have your 5-year-old notice your adult acne. I knew the cause of the acne was hormonal, diet, or a combination of both. My goal was to eliminate sugar to see if that what was causing the breakout.

What I Learned

The eczema on my hands finally cleared up! When my eczema started I made a decision to not treat it with hydrocortisone because of the long list of side effects. I believed there was an underlying factor triggering this condition. About a year ago, I believed I had “leaky gut syndrome” caused by my diet and stress. I stopped eating gluten a year ago and dairy six months ago and my eczema significantly improved, but did not go away completely on my hands. I have been seeing a new integrated doctor, Dr. Hyun Joon Lee from Scarsdale Integrated Family Medicine. She is fantastic and after one look at my hands, she immediately identified my eczema type as Dyshidrotic. She recommended I limit the amount of water my hands are exposed to. The combination of wearing gloves when I will have excessive exposure to water like preparing meals and giving my girls showers and eliminating sugar and carbs from my diet cleared up my eczema.

My acne cleared up a little bit but not completely so my breakout is also caused by hormones.

I eat red meat. Before this detox I did not eat red meat. I had given it up over fifteen years ago in college because I was scared of getting mad cow disease. I periodically tried to eat it again but it was too hard to digest and would always give me an upset stomach. It took me the first week to adjust to eating red meat again. Now that I can eat it, I learned how to cook a perfect medium rare steak. Yum!

I love the spiral vegetable slicer (you can buy it here). I haven’t eaten pasta in a long time. On the detox, I saw a recipe for spaghetti sauce over zucchini noodles. I would make the noodles with my spiral vegetable slicer, steam the zucchini between 5-10 minutes to get them soft but still have a crunch, toss with 1/2 teaspoon of salt and serve under pasta sauce. I love pasta sauce and this is a fun way to eat it.

Delicious no sugar recipes. I thought I would only be eating steak, eggs, vegetables and bacon on the detox but that was not true at all. There are great detox-approved recipes on Diane Sanfilippo’s Balanced Bites website and the 21 Day Sugar Detox Facebook community. One of my favorites were the pumpkin pancakes. Now that I’m off the detox I can add honey and they are even more delicious. My absolute favorite was the Hot & Sweet Ginger-Garlic Chicken. I was introduced to coconut aminos, a great sugar free way to add flavor. Each day you are able to eat either one green-tip banana or a green granny smith apple. My favorite way to eat a banana in a Green smoothie. The recipe is super easy, 1 frozen banana, handful of spinach, 3/4 cup of unsweetened almond milk, and a spoonful of almond butter. Blend and serve. My girls loved this smoothie also so we all drank it together.

More conscious about the sugar I eat, avoiding processed sugar. The detox made me realize how much sugar I eat from fruit to swedish fish. At the beginning my body was adjusting and I was tired and craved my usual sugar fixes. By the end my body adjusted and I had enough energy on the no sugar diet. I lost a couple of pounds and I was eating steak and bacon. I’m excited to be eating sugar again and I don’t want to pollute my body with processed sugars.

The 21 Day Sugar Detox book is coming out October 29, 2013 ($22.96). If you pre-order the book you get 7 quick start guides to get your started on the detox today ($21 value). Click Here to order.

A successfully sugar detoxed mama,
Chrissy xo

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, but all opinions are mine. I will only share with you products and services I have tried and would use myself or for my family. By clicking an affiliate link, you are helping to support this blog. Thank you.